And it was so!

Well, as you can no doubt see, there is something big tonight. Something that is bigger than any of us. Something that the entire world can enjoy. That something is, of course...

The World Series.

and, you know, the new layout. Sam here, or should I say, Secret Agent "Lazy-assed Samurai" here to give you the scoop, the skinny, the poop, the four-one-one, the info and whatnot on our new layout. *takes out a pointer* Okay, up here to the right, you'll notice a nice picture of a random cast member. Hit your reload button. It changed, didn't it? Yep, we kidnapped ourself one of them kick-ass programmer-types (Thanks, Dorm!) and he wrote us up a nice little cgi-script for it and was nice enough to host it on his very own Rydia.net server. Now then, if you look above, you'll see the new News banner so you can tell who's doing the news update so you can skip over it if it's me or something. *Points to the left* You'll also notice that we've rid ourselves of the link buttons, save for the link of the week, which happens to be to Lethal Doses, a really cool webcomic drawn by everyone's friend, Hot Soup. You'll also notice that we've got a mailing list for you to recieve your not-quite-daily dose of news-update goodness. Just slap in your email addy there and we'll do the rest with a little help from listbot.

Don't think that's all we've done. Oh no, not by a longshot. You'll notice today's comic isn't so much a comic as it is a picture. It's actually from our newly updated Characters section, which has newly-added Corey and Mer, as well as anime headshots for all the characters. It's also part of the new desktop background for you in the Stuff section! While you're there, check out the updated "Making of Idle Minds" feature, where you can see pictures of my desk and the original sketch for Amanda's character!

As you can tell, I've been doing a LOT of drawing this week, which is why we couldn't put up an update on Wednesday, so this link should be a sufficient apology. Besides, if I HAD done an update on Wednesday, it would have been PDOOMA.

I'll leave you all with this... use it wisely.

-Sam, who is STILL drawing more new stuff.

Better late than... nevermind..

Hey everyone, Sam here. Sorry about not having an update for Wednesday. I know that we might have worried one or two of you out there who had bets on our lives going (I've got $50 on November 12th, 2015), but we've just been busy working on a nice little surprise for you. Let's just say i've been drawing a LOT of new artwork. Not so much that I couldn't pump out a strip for today, though. The real life corey is starting to get a bit agitated about losing so often.. perhaps he'll get his revenge soon. I know the real-life Mer is enjoying it. =)

Okay, we've got to talk. One person posted in the forums. ONE person. ONE. Come on, people, you're better than that.

Okay, well, I'm tired and I need to draw more for tomorrow, so stay tuned for Sunday's strip and our big surprise!

-Sam, who has Japanese class in the morning.

Sam wa darui desu!

Hey everyone, Sam here. You know, in my line of work, if it's not a drought, it's a frickin' flash flood. I had work Friday and Saturday nights until around 2am each, so I couldn't get a strip drawn for Sunday, but thanks to Stig for doing so for me.

In that same vein, I got to meet and interview some cool people on friday. The first of which was Matt Corboy of Dare For Dollars, an internet show that has people do crazy things for some quick cash. It's a really cool show and I suggest you all go give it a watch. The second cool person that I got to interview was Kara McNamara, who co-created MTV's The Blame Game and was the female lawyer on said show. They're engaged (awwwwww) and they were both hi-larious on the show. (Oh, I should mention that my university produces a late night talk show called Nightcap, and I had the honor of hosting the last episode as part of the "audition season," and hopefully will get the position full time next season until I graduate.) Thirdly, I met a funnyman named Roger Smith, who is now making the comedy rounds at clubs and whatnot, and if he's coming to your area, make sure you go see him. Make SURE you go see him.

Ah, the age-old dilemma of either telling the girl you're going out with the truth and risk being brought in for credit card fraud, or going along with the charade and eventually legally changing your name to the one you told her. Such is today's strip. Hopefully we can rig up a poll of some sort that will allow people to vote to see what you think Sam should do. Until then, try discussing it in our FORUMS for a change.. yes, we have FORUMS.. just click on the button that says FORUMS to go to the FORUMS. Can you tell we want you to go to the forums?

-Sam, who is going to post in the FORUMS right now.

NO SAM DAY! (Sam's out sick or working or something, so we've thrown together a strip for yas! Hope you like it, with any luck Sam'll be back tomorrow)

I like to think of myself as 1 part Bad Mutha, and 2 parts Super Freak...

Yep, I'm back, thought they managed to get rid of me, didn't you? Stig here reporting another exciting SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY! IM strip. Wanna know why I was gone this week? TO BAD! YOU'RE GONNA HEAR IT ANYWAY! Much like the guys over at Megatokyo, I've been overworked. You guys all know about my month long vacation for September, well, see, I forgot something in that time, and that would be that I agreed to take on a job which required me to use Director (amoung other proggies). Now Director was incredibly hard for me to learn (wouldn't know why, I took to Flash pretty easily) and it's always been sort of my bane. It's the program that I never mention at the top of my resume on the fear that someone might actually want me to use it. For those of you who don't know what Director is, head on over to shockwave.com and look around, practically everything you see there was done in Director. For those of you with a bit more multi-media experience, Director is to Flash as a PIII 1GHZ 700megs RAM is to a Commidor 64. A lot of the same principles of Flash apply, but it has a ton of additional features and is capable of much more. My problem with it is the reterming of everything (note to readers: I almost never bother to learn the technical term for something in my work, I just like to do it and let that be it, terming everything I do during work with the sheer volume of things I do during work could make a kitten's head explode, and if you're a decent human being then you don't want that to happen mister!). But I 'spose I'll put some more work into it like I was doing this week, I spent this week doing moderate work for my clients, learning director, and sleeping (which sucks 'cause I only got to see Lisa like 2 hours a night >.<;;) But now I'm back, and oddly enough I feel like diving off a high board today. But not before I bore you with a couple more paragraphs!

HUZZAH! I've got a new headset/microphone! (well, Lisa bought if for me 'cause my old one sucked). Labtec you guys, LABTEC! Have a look, sweet, no? Plus when I pull down the little mic I look like a Gundam Pilot!

Ah, to pilot a Gundam, my dream since I laid eyes on the series back in '85 (though it was a bit hazy then, me being 5 and everything) So you can imagine my excitement (though sullened because I missed Joel, Sam, and Panda-chan) when I found a booth of guys making their own mech and looking for a test pilot at AnimeEXPO this year! I damn-near wet myself! Have a look at my new best buddies' site. The guys were pretty cool, and they didn't lie to me saying that the initial mech I was up for piloting (yes I asked to be in it!) would most likely handle like a tractor. I've been quiet about it because, quite literally, I don't know what the hell's going on. But if I get to pilot a mech, then I can die happy (herm... maybe I'll just ask that guy who built a Zeta Gundam replica, if I can use his).

Heh, Sam's got me there, I have actually been planning a couple changes to the site. Most are purly functional and will only make your experience more enjoyable. Example: On 800x600 the site scrolls horizontally, I'm trying to fix that inbetween work but it's taking a little while. Also, I'm trying to get as much of the site automated as possible (why you ask? So if I'm not here the site can do everything on it's own!) Right now I have a bigger role in the site than I need to have, Our frontpage is almost totally automated (since we signed up for the Blogger service, which is what's making this news post available right now, but something I'd like to change would be the link buttons you see (they change every week!) If I can get these automated, then if one of the cast finds a cool link they can just upload it and it'll be worked into the rotation (this is farely simple, I'm told, but I'm by no means a coder so I'll probably ask Joel to do it). If it works out to what I'm planning, whenever you refresh (or reload for you Netscape patrons) you'll get a new set of IM cast favorites!

Well, I'm off to eat, what's up with you guys? You don't like our forums or something? I'm hurt!

-Stig( Stephen Hawking speaks highly of us! )

UltraFlash 3000 - I've been sitting on UF3K for a while, it was a pretty cool flash site with a cute little animated style, but then came the redesign, and now it kicks too much ass not to share! I love seeing Flash developers incorporate some user preferences into their site, which is exactly what UF3k has done (allowing users to specify background music, which is easy enough, but also allowing them to specify the layout color! Which is incredibly sweet and different! I prefer a dark gray). Make sure you check it out, Supermonk along is enough to make this site worthwhile.

Greetings again, Earth people!

    I come to you today a bitter, hollow shell of the man I formerly was. I also come to you with a new perspective on time. A typical class period at school is 50 minutes, no problem. I can sleep it, I can nod and make eye contact while thinking of which girl in the class is cutest, I can do pretty much anything to occupy myself for 50 minutes without much trouble. Just now however, I invested a simple 63 minutes of my life into something, and lost it. I want those 63 minutes back, despite the fact that I would, without a doubt, use them to do the same thing over and over again until it worked or time stopped giving me the 63 minutes back...in which case I'd probably still do it once more for kicks. The other night I decided my desktop lacked a certain....I don't know what. To fill this void I created a wallpaper of Asuka Langley Soryu from Neon Genesis Evangelion. The plan went well and I was pleased with the result (besides the upper right, where I should've made it less obvious it was a square shot). Tonight, I decided, that I would take full advantage of my serial experiments: lain DVD and visual experiments lain (the lain bible) and make a lain wallpaper. One that I felt was worthy of following the one of Asuka-sama. Well you can probably tell from the opening which program decided to crash after an hour and three minutes of scanning, screen capping, and editing as I chose the "Save as..." option. Tomorrow, its grandparents die.
    I don't know how many of you are aware of the current situation with Israel and Palestine, but I'm sure those of you who do are as worried as I. Economic crisis? We can recover. Diplomacy shot to nothing? We can recover. But the fact of the matter is, if this irritates either side or a neighboring country enough, the entire Middle East could become nothing more than a giant smoking crater like the island now known as Atlantis. Even if not by nuclear weapons, by a conflagration set off by any given oil field in the area. If you want my less reserved take on the issue of war, that's what my latest scribble entry is about. [Note: at time of printing, scribble.nu is down for maintainance, not our fauilt :)]
    Though I would love to comment on today's strip, I feel Sam has already made any relevant points as far as a pu-ro-to ri-n emerging, and I know you guys don't want another rant like last time ^^. So in lieu of said insanity, I will provide a few linkies, nothing pimpy, just some sites that really catch my attention.
First off is Close the world a great site for serial experiments: lain and a few other sections. The main appeal of this site besides it's almost hypnotizing soundtrack and beautiful aesthetics? If Stig ever claims to be good at Flash, I shall point him this direction and laugh as a man posessed.
Secondly, a nice alternative to the "Nihongo" site listed above which will give you charts of the pronouniciation languages, verb conjugation, particles, and some vocab, I strongly suggest Haucks for all your Japanese learning needs. Boku wa Asuka-chan o anadarakenisutai desu.
Lastly, as the deadline approaches, I must recommend BeOS to anyone who wants a powerful graphical OS, a nice selection of free software, and a lovable interface. Fast, powerful, pretty, Be. I would use it more than Windows if some of these clauses became true-
1) I got off my lazy ass and networked the Windows9x boxen on my LAN through it properly
2) Adobe ported some stuff to it
3) I got off my lazy ass and compiled GIMP in Be.
    That's all for tonight folks, I'll catch you on the proverbial flipside, don't go eat a gun on me.
-Joel, the mad

"The Christians love their guns
The church and NRA
Pray for their salvation
Prey on the lower faiths
The story book's been read
And every line believed
The curriculum's been set
Logic is a threat
Reason searched and seized
"
-NOFX's The Decline off their "The Decline" EP..

-Joel

Plotline! Finally!

Yes! Finally a plotline! This one will actually go on through the end of this week and probably into next week and maybe even the week after! perhaps even longer! Why, you ask? Because I, Sam, enjoy pulling storylines out of my nether-regions, really. I tend to thrive on stress.. well, really, I don't, but I just like saying that.

Well, Stig's missing in action again.. I'm beginning to think he just likes watching me squirm at 11:45 to come up with a newspost for the day. ^^;; I guess i'm good at that.

You guys aren't going to the forums like I asked you to. Why not? If you don't go to the forums, then i'll be forced to spank each and every one of you.. well, I'll take the females and Stig will take the males. (shhhh.. i've heard things, if you know what I mean. wink wink nudge nudge)

On that note, I'm off to bed! New comic up on Friday to whet your collective whistles. In the meantime, seriously, check out Megatokyo. They rock something commonly referred to as fierce.

-Sam, relaxing comfortably with Friday's strip already done.

Proving a Point:

And that point would be that the SNES Super Mario Kart kicks the collective ass of the N64 Mario Kart. It's a proven fact, really. If you can resist the wonders of using the feather to take the shortcut on the haunted track level, then you're a soulless, heartless mass of flesh undeserving of true love. Well, not really.. aww, come on, Ike still loves ya, baby!

Not much else going on today, at least on my end. Stig may have something to say about that, though. I wouldn't know though, because he's asleep right now. *Pokes Stig with a pointy stick* See? Oh wait, that means he might be dead. I'll be calling an ambulance now, so in the meantime, check out the Forums and the Stuff section. And check out the Contact section! I'm under the impression that Stig redid that. Check in wednesday for a new comic!

-Sam, who actually finished through friday's strip!

I am vengence, I am the night, I am not, however, Darkwing Duck!

There's a part of me that wants to be Batman, a part of me that wants to be Kevin Bacon in Footloose, and a part of me that wants a cup of Daiquiri Ice from Baskin Robbins right now. The first is the most prominent mind you. Why is Batman so cool? Because he's not some kind of dumbass who jumped into a pile of beakers filled with sparkly liquids to gain power, hell no! He's a big scary man that's trained himself to be a big scary man who can kick ass. I'd like to be a big scary man that can kick ass. Now, I do actually have a batarang, that's why this strip exists, I have two actually, a classic type and a functional type. The classic type looks like the batarang from the early 90s cartoon, and the functional type actually works do to design changes. Just another reason why I am truly qualified to be Batman, in this world of Incredible half naked green men, and pretty Latinas with *HUGE* lips, we need a big scary guy that can kick ass.

Heh, wanna know something funny? The ancient layout for Idle Minds (read: El Crappo!) still exists. Originally we intended to host the comic on my Hispeed account, using various perl and php scrppts to get the automization, but I hate coding and Keenspace does it for us. Anyway, the point of this paragraph, the ancient layout still exists on my hispeed account from when we were testing it out, if you'd like to see it, click here (warning, shield your eyes with some kind of protective wear, this page emits fugly like... well... fugly.com). An update on our domain, we know that the frame doesn't disappear on some browsers, this is because it's run through Namezero right now because we're all cheap bastards. I should've bought the domain from Namezero over a month ago, but it didn't happen for some reason.

Remember that uber secret thingie we spoke about a while back? IMEX? Well, it stands for Idle Minds EX, our own little manga strip spinoff (essentially our answer to Megatokyo). Have a look at the site here the comic strip itself hasn't launched yet, our artist (Panda-chan) has been pre-occupied with stuff that she actually needs to do. The sketch gallery is up as well as some other parts of the site that I don't think I can remember right now. Don't I look hella cool? Don't hassle Panda-chan about it though, 'else the mighty foot of Joel shall find it's way up your ass! Upon arriving up your ass the tip of Joel's shoe shall break off, becoming firmly wedged up your pooper and totally inoperable if done correctly, do you really want to risk that?

*zzzzzzt* hey kids, Sam here, breaking in to Stig's regularly scheduled news update for a little tidbit of information. As you read this, I'm out editing a project for money, because money is good. This is one of the reasons I'm not writing said update from start to finish. I'm essentially speaking to you from the past! Well, around 2pm Saturday, at least. Anyway, you'll notice that this sunday's strip has something to do with last sunday's strip. And it's not coincidental! Sundays will have roughly something to do with each other, and will contain their own storylines. They're essentially in the same timeline as the weekday strips, but showcase the other characters. Enter: The Batman Saga. However short it may be *smiles weakly*.
In other news, I went to check up on the The Fine Print page over there on MP3 dot com and, lo and behold, they've got a new track up! Needless to say, this just made my freakin' day along with Joel's. So much so that I, finally, decided to trade money for their CD, $484.00, and have my own damn copy. While in the spending frenzy that was buying that, I paddled over to LewisBlack dot net and purchased his comedy CD as well. Mr. Black is one of my favorite comedians out there, and if you haven't seen him on The Daily Show, either of his two Comedy Central Presents comedy shows, on Late Night with Conan O'Brien or any other late night talk show, then you, sir or madam, are a horribly deprived human being. If you can even CALL yourself a human being.
On that note, I'll send you back to Stig and his update. Hopefully my friend Jason and I will finish editing this in time to check out the update!

GO WATCH RUN LOLA RUN NOW!!! I'm not asking you to, I'm TELLING you to! It's easily the coolest movie I've ever seen, right up there with Swingers, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Go, and even the uber cool Surf Ninjas! Teaming of a great story, a girl who can scream so loud that it shatters glass, and a debt to a mean looking gangster guy make this movie yummy (for lack of a better term). AND LOLA IS HOT!!!! *prepares to lose his nuts by the hand of girlfriend Lisa*

You know, updating the news here at IM is a very large responsibility, only bestowed to me so that I may abuse it and link you to friends sites, so that's what I'm gonna do smarty man! A lot of people have asked me whether I'm a Republican or Democrat (note that I didn't say, "since we opened the site") and I'm none of the above, I, like my buddy Isa, am an Otakan! originally I supported Pikachu, but since that whole scandal with the cross dressing and boozing he's lost my support. So this coming November, vote Goku! Because a moron in office can't possibly do any harm! (we hope). Also the site's being redesigned and it looks damn cool, great work Isa!

GRAAAAH! WHO IS THE DIGIMON EMPORER? I miss one episode and now I can't find a single person in all my hangouts that'll answer me! I think it's Joe, 'cept he looks all weird and stuff.... Wai! I had Lisa translate the title to Candidate for a Goddess and came up with Megami Kouhousei, which I plugged into a search engine and found this little gem. Read up on the series, it's hella cool, and pretty new apparently. Also, a very new anime that I couldn't recommend more highly, Love Hina (and according to Molokidan, Hina either means doll or country) has amazed me from episode 1, I'd have to say that Motoko's my favorite right now, with Kitsune in a close second. Both of these are available in DVD form, and I recommend you sink some cash into both, you won't regret it (or at least shop around the internet for some encodes.. just see them). Well, by the reflections on the glossy paper on which I sketched a couple Hitmonlee and Blastoise about 2 years ago, I can barely see my wall clock, meaning I'm leaving now and trying to justify it.... Bai now!

-Stig

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